There is a quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, “
Nothing
in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort,
pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led
an easy life.” Now, if Roosevelt were alive today he would
certainly not envy corporations that have had an incredibly easy life
since Republicans allowed them to control of America and take
inordinately huge profits and benefits without exerting any effort, or
bearing any costs. Oh it is true there are costs involved in
guaranteeing that already highly-profitable corporations continue making
obscene profits without putting forth much effort, but with
pro-corporate Republicans running the government for the past 14 years
the costs have been borne by the poor, the vanishing middle class, and
the elderly; it is just the way things are in corporate-controlled
America.
Unfortunately, if President Obama, some Senate
Democrats, and all Republicans have their way, the American people will
continue paying to ensure that corporations have easy lives and continue
getting a free ride as a result of the corporate-written Trans Pacific
Partnership (TPP). It is the corporate trade agreement the cabal running
America lusts to see President Obama fast-track to fruition and it is a
lust he appears incredibly eager to satisfy. It is likely that after
nearly six years of being hated by Republicans and corporate America, he
does long to please more than just his liberal base and cement his
legacy as a friend to all; including corporate America.
It is bad enough that the TTP will certainly
undermine Americans’ jobs, environmental and financial regulations, and
give corporations an easier means of hiding their obscene profits
offshore to avoid paying taxes, but it is worse that Republicans and
some Democrats in the Senate want the elderly to pay for the
consequences of the bad trade deal. To soften the damage to workers who
will lose their jobs to the trade deal, a couple of Senate Democrats
fought tooth-and-nail to include an incredibly petty provision, the
Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, to garner enough votes to
give the President authority to fast-track the TTP and cement his legacy
as a pro-trade, or is it pro-corporate, Democratic President.
The TAA is the program that provides retraining
services to the workers who will lose their jobs after the TTP is
finalized, and assist them to buy health insurance with tax credits out
of their pathetic unemployment benefits when they are poverty-stricken.
Since corporations cannot be bothered, or expected, to pay for
retraining American workers who lost their jobs to the trade deal,
Senate Republicans and some Democrats decided that the least the elderly
can do is pay for the TAA program out of cuts to their Medicare
insurance benefits. For dog’s sake this is America and no red-blooded
corporate puppet would think to ask, or expect, the corporations that
wrote and will profit from the trade deal to pay for the TAA program; it
would be an abomination and so unfair. It just is not the way America
under corporate ownership operates and nearly every politician in
Washington knows it and votes accordingly.
However, although the Senate believes the elderly
should relieve corporations of any burden for funding TAA training and
tax credits for American workers displaced by the corporate trade deal,
61 House Democrats sent a
letter
to Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi stating that
although the TAA is an essential part of even a devastatingly bad
corporate trade agreement, it is patently unfair to pay for it with “
cuts to critical social programs like Medicare.”
The 61 House Democrats led by Congressional Progressive Caucus
co-chairs Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva are demanding a new funding
mechanism for the cost of TAA for displaced workers; but they did not
call for a corporate tax hike to cover the cost. Why? Because this is
America and corporations get a free ride which is precisely why
Washington politicians let corporations write the trade agreement in
secret.
There is some opinion that House Democrats may use
the TAA funding issue to thwart the TPP altogether, either by watching
House Republicans refuse to fund anything to help American workers and
effectively kill a vote on TPP. It is possible that House Democrats will
not vote for TPP unless 90 House Republicans first vote to fund TAA and
Nancy Pelosi is concerned enough that she is negotiating with GOP
leaders to find a new way to pay for TAA and replace the Medicare cuts
since keeping them in place could end up killing it, and TPP altogether.
The only given in this whole sordid TPP and TAA
affair is that no-one in Washington will demand that the only
beneficiaries of the trade agreement, the corporations that wrote it in
secret, at least absorb the cost of the Trade Adjustment Assistance
program; and why should they? There are millions of elderly Americans
who paid into Medicare throughout their entire working lives who can
suck it up and do right by corporate America and pay for retraining
Americans who will lose their jobs to international trade. Plus, what
red-blooded retired American dare refuse to forfeit their health
insurance to pay for tax credits to help out-of-work Americans buy
health insurance? Republicans have been demanding for years that the
elderly give up their Medicare and Social Security to fund tax cuts for
the poor beleaguered corporations, so it is not out of line that they,
and some Democrats, believe the elderly should pay to relieve corporate
responsibility for training out-of-work Americans after killing more of
their jobs.
The elderly, soon-to-be displaced workers, and all
Americans for that matter, should be livid that the people who wrote the
trade deal in secret, big pharma and other corporations, will make even
greater profits at the expense of American jobs, environmental and
financial regulations, and the elderly’s Medicare. Apparently, it has
become so normal to make other Americans pay to increase corporate
profits, that only 61 House Democrats see what President Obama and the
Senate refuse to even acknowledge; at least out loud. America is under
complete control and run by corporations to such an extent that big
business can rape and pillage the population with impunity simply
because the rich are well aware that only a handful of Democrats are
unafraid of standing up to their thievery.
It
is worth noting here, right now, that since the provisions of the TTP
were written in abject secrecy by corporations over the past three
years, it is highly unlikely that, like the entire Congress, President
Obama has read much more than a very brief summary of the TTP’s
provisions. As more than one pundit has acknowledged, the President and
Democrats understand that, with only about a year-and-a-half left of his
presidency, Republicans are not going to pass anything that might be
attributed positively to President Obama’s legacy. A significant benefit
to corporate America like the Trans-Pacific Partnership will add to the
President’s legacy, and because this is corporate America, it is left
to the people, whether it is the elderly forfeiting their Medicare
insurance benefits, or the poor forfeiting Medicaid and food stamps, to
ensure that a positive corporate profit legacy will be at the expense of
anyone but the people that wrote and will benefit from TPP; corporate
America.
